Interesting Links for 07-03-2012

[andrewducker]

• Ken Clarke defends secret courts. I, of course, think they're an awful idea.
  (tags: law secrecy security_theatre uk )
• 6 Things Rich People Need to Stop Saying
  (tags: money income society )
• Jews in Scotland may be disenfranchised by a Saturday vote.
  Is there a reason why voting has to happen on one day? Give people a week to vote, with daily updates on the ongoing count!
  (tags: voting uk scotland independence jews )
• Kids born later in the year more likely to be diagnosed with ADHD
  (tags: adhd diagnosis children )
• Govt. agencies, colleges demand applicants' Facebook passwords. (And they can, frankly, fuck off)
  (tags: facebook privacy employment usa )
• Dammit, I find myself largely in agreement with esr on Hollywood, piracy and the internet
  (tags: censorship politics freedom )
• A man who informed police when he found child abuse images on his computer has not been allowed to be alone with his daughter for four months.
  (tags: uk Child_abuse )
• How I became Amazon’s pitchman for a 55-gallon drum of personal lubricant on Facebook
  (tags: lubricant facebook amazon advertising )
• On Writers Block
  (tags: neilgaiman writing )
• I hadn't realised that Gillian Anderson stood on a box for The X-Files
  (tags: GillianAnderson x-files tv )
• Either be offensive, or don't be offensive. Being offensive and then pretending you weren't is just dumb.
  (tags: humour offensive )
• Rather than a mansion tax we should be sorting out council tax
  (tags: tax uk housing )
• Romney vs Mr Burns - can you tell which quote belongs to which one?
  (tags: simpsons politics usa )

Comments

[matgb]

No reason why you can't have voting allowed for several days except security of ballot boxes, but publishing results as they come in is problematic, especially in single member seat FPTP elections.

Basically, there's a natural tendency for voters to want to "back a winner" or stop the least liked option, if voters are published as you go then that can lead to marginal or third party candidates getting even more squeezed in vote share than they already do, and rewards parties who can mobilise their voters to get out early.

For a yes/no referendum it's less problematic, but still not a great idea-amongst other things it can lead to a depressed turnout if it looks like a foregone conclusion, if "Yes" gets an early lead then some "no" voters may give up and stay home, or vice versa.

It's a known problem in California in Presidential elections, because they declare state by state turnout is significantly lower in CA if there's already a clear winner, and that also depresses the vote for other elections held at the same time, etc. (that's from memory and I'm ten years out of date on the research, but it won't have changed that much).

[andrewducker]

It's because I'm in a marginal party that I want it - that way I can wait until near the end and then make my decision from the ones with a chance!

[bart-calendar.livejournal.com]

I can sort of see it with the student athletes. If just one player accepts a gift from a member of the alumni then the entire team can get suspended - and alumni are very crafty about finding ways to give gifts to athletes.

These guys are already going to university for free while non-athletes have to pay tens of thousands of dollars a year and taking spaces in the student body that could otherwise have gone to people who actually want an education.

If you accept the free ride that student athletes get then it seems reasonable for the university to do everything in it's power to make sure you don't shut down their athletic program because you are too dumb to realize that an alumni giving you a car is a NCAA violation and that if you put up images of you and the car on Facebook you are likely to get caught - should you ever piss off one of your "friends."

(A better solution would be to get rid of sports at the university level, but because sports brings in so much money, that won't happen. Another solution would be to pay the student athletes for playing games since their games bring in millions and millions of dollars for the universities. If they got a check from the school they'd be less tempted to accept cash and gifts from alumni.)

[andrewducker]

Should the university also be allowed to open their mail, tap their mobile phone conversations, and place bugs in their accomodation?

Because I view this as being equivalent to those.

[bart-calendar.livejournal.com]

Any many universities the students are required to have the doors to their dorm rooms open at all times if there is another student in the room and if they provide and pay for their mobile phones they tell them there is tracking software on it.

I only know of one college where they open the student's mail - Simon's Rock - but that's because about 15 years ago a guy got gun parts sent to him through the mail, used them to build an automatic weapon and then shot a bunch of students.

As to whether they should be able to do so or not - it depends. If the students are told in advance that this is what will happen if they choose that university then they have the right to make that choice.

My brother chose to go to a university where he knew that he would have no privacy in his dorm at all. The door would be open if anyone was in the room and if he got caught having sex with a girl he'd be suspended for a semester and if he got caught having sex with a guy he'd be expelled. I thought he was out of his mind to agree to that, but it was told to him upfront before he chose the school.

I suspect these athletes are being given the same choice and deciding that it's worth it in exchange for $80,000 to $100,000 worth of free tuition/room and board.

If they don't want their facebook monitored like that they always have the option of going to the school as an actual student and paying for their education the way non athletes do.

[bart-calendar.livejournal.com]

I think a point that may be missing is that in America student athletes are not really students in the conventional sense of the word.

They have their own dorms separate from the actual students, they don't have to pay money to be there, they are special classes created for them to ensure they get passing grades even if they can barely read and write, should they have problems with these easy classes they are then given special tutors (that are usually only available to other students for roughly $150 an hour)for free and are, essentially, employees of the university used for fund raising efforts.

Meanwhile to attract them to the schools alumni (who gamble on the games and have a vested interest in seeing the best players possible come to/stay at the school) are legendary for giving them hookers, $100,000 sports cars and all sorts of other shit - that can get the university in a lot of trouble, and the universities have had a real hard problem stopping alumni from doing so, so there needs to be some checks and balances in place.

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

Damn, that's a really good question. Why does voting all have to happen on one day? Surely if it was an all week event, turn outs would be way up... and that would be awesome for democracy.

If, perhaps, very bad for tv stations.

[naath.livejournal.com]

Why is it that alumni giving athletes sports cars is something that "can get the university in a lot of trouble" (hookers I can see, but cars are legal to own)?

[momentsmusicaux.livejournal.com]

> daily updates on the ongoing count!

I'm pretty sure there's a very good reason we don't start the count until all voting had happened. There'd be all sorts of chaotic effects as parties and candidates and voters would discover how things were progressing.

In France, there's a total media blackout on elections for the final week (or two) of campaigning, which I imagine is for broadly similar reasons.

[bart-calendar.livejournal.com]

It's against the rules for third parties to give student athletes anything at all to encourage them to go to or stay at a given school.

Some schools have been shut out of competition for years at a time when it came out that alumni were giving gifts to the athletes (which cost the schools millions of dollars in revenue a year.)

The schools agree to be the monitors and enforcers of the NCAA's rules and if the student breaks the rules, the school gets shut out. (Which ends up being grossly unfair to the students who didn't take the bribes.)

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

I suspect it is a hangover from when voting was done by acclamation or by hands up and everyone had to be in one place at the same time.

Not convinced by the idea of having updates on the score during the voting but this may be a bit of conservatism on my part.

[a-pawson.livejournal.com]

In the UK media outlets do not report on political campaigns or exit polls whilst the polls are open. Aside form fairness, it makes sense. If the media started to report exit polls it could lead to mass tactical voting.

[a-pawson.livejournal.com]

Releasing as the count went along would be a nightmare. I expect you would reach a situation where huge numbers of people delayed voting until the very end so they could decide if/how to vote tactically.

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

When it happened in America, and Fox declared Bush the winner even though polls were still open on the west coast, it seemed to result in a lot of people not bothering to go out. Which is odd, I would have assumed that a party being in the lead would seriously motivate the opposition to get out there and vote.

Still. I think updates could be useful, just. Anything that gets better turn-outs in our elections. It's shameful how few people bother to vote.

[naath.livejournal.com]

weird

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Everyone pretends that college football is still an amateur competition, like any other varsity match, when actually it's an incredibly popular, lucrative and pervasive professional sport. As part of this charade, "student" atheletes are obliged to accept compensation and bribes only in a small subset of officially sanctioned ways, and anything else is A Moral Outrage (TM).

A side effect is that there's an incredible pressure on schools to conceal it if the atheletes show up sub-par academically. Remember in Buffy, where the school principle bullies Willow into "helping" an athlete? I think it's like that, but an awful lot more so, not because the schools are stupid, but because they make lots of money from the games, so can only fund themselves by perpetuating the situation.

[naath.livejournal.com]

gotta have people manning (and womanning) the polls

[bart-calendar.livejournal.com]

The idea is they want to spread good athletes among as many teams as possible and don't want all the best athletes to end up at two or three schools that have the richest alumni who can offer the best bribes.

This all came to a head about a decade or so ago when people started noticing that a ton of talent was suddenly choosing to go to University Of Nevada Las Vegas - an educationally sub par school.

Turns out that professional gamblers (some of whom hadn't even gone to the school) were giving the students tons of gifts to entice them there so they could stack the deck in their favor by betting on the teams.

Some of the players were actually illiterate, but the gamblers were even paying people to impersonate the kids in class and take their tests for them.

[bart-calendar.livejournal.com]

It's a truly awful system and I can't fault the universities who want to do everything they can to crack down on the rampant bribes.

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

Ah yes, we can hardly have the volunteers taking a whole week off work can we.

[a-pawson.livejournal.com]

I don't think turn-outs would be increased. A huge amount of effort is put into ensuring everyone gets the opportunity to vote. Pretty much anyone can get a postal vote. The polls open very early and close late. Everyone receives leaflets explaining the numerous different ways they can vote.

There can be very few people who genuinely are unable to cast their vote. I tend to think that if people cannot be bothered to do so on polling day then tough. I also doubt that if people are not interested enough to vote on one day then I doubt they would do so on a different day.

[andrewducker]

Yup, I'd expect people who were completely wedded to one party to vote early, and then other people to vote for their favourite of the ones in the lead. This would provide impetus for you to vote early if you thought your party had a chance of winning, so that others would see you as worth voting for.

It would be a ridiculous system and _still_ better than the one we currently have.

[andrewducker]

See above - I'd want there to be more information available, under a FPTP system. Having heard many reports of people saying "I didn't vote for X because I didn't think they had a chance of winning in my area." this would give them the information to know whether they did.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

I think the point is, not "it's creepy and weird for the school (or government) to tap its employees phones" (although it is), but that it's catastrophically dumb to panic and say "AGH! I don't understand the internet but I think the problem is real, so I will pick a solution at random regardless of how harmful it is and YELL AT ANYONE WHO DISAGREES."

Off the top of my head, reasons why it's a disaster include:

* Decreases security by training people to give out their passwords
* Reduces accountability. "How did that questionable stuff get on your facebook account?" "Well, you can't prove it's me, maybe the coach did it, after all, he has my password."
* Even worse, will be a giant legal clusterfuck if they ever admitted something illegal on facebook. "It wasn't me, it was my coach." "My coach leaked my facebook password and someone ruined my reputation, I'm suing for damages."
* Randomly breaches the privacy of everyone who foolishly friends one of the students. I assume they don't come with warnings "Full name Joe Dobbs (spied upon by UoA, DHS, etc, etc)". May there be legal problems with the coach (in effect) posing as one of their sudents on facebook.

Notice that these are problem with giving up the password. Being required to friend someone in authority is problematic as several of the problems still apply, but avoids the worst ones.

It's like saying "We need to tap your phones to make sure you don't bring the university into disrepute. In order to do so, we need your social security number, birth certificate, and a copy of your passport doctored to show your coach's face instead of your own to make the arrangements with the phone company." Even if you accept the spying is necessary, can you see the potential pitfalls in giving your coach control over your identity like that? I mean, I'm sure universities DO do that sort of thing, but I think they should find a non-stupid way of doing it instead.

(Or, preferably, not at all. And preferably give up the charade of college sports :))

[naath.livejournal.com]

We could make it be like jury duty...